“Syme was not only dead, he was abolished, an unperson.”

Re: Obama losing independents

On the Corner today, Rich Lowry has a snarky post called “More depressing news for the GOP.” In it, Lowry touts the 22-point lead the GOP has among independents on the generic Congressional ballot question. Now, even though Lowry doesn’t mention Obama, I immediately sprung into defensive mode, and began to think of reasons why this actually wasn’t bad news for Obama. But then I realized something. If I were polled on the President, how would I answer? When asked for party ID, I would say independent. And if asked to choose between Strongly Approve, Approve, Disapprove, and Strongly Disapprove, I would select Disapprove. I thought of this as I read that Obama is considering adding 20,000 to 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Despite any bluster from the GOP about needing to be strong and listen to commander McChrystal, the real pussy move is continuing to engage in perpetual war, just like so many Presidents before him, because he’s afraid that scaling back would cause him to be viewed as “weak” by the chicken-hawk and armchair-warrior crowd. Obama has been a pathetic leader, and that’s one of several reaons I would answer that way if I were polled. But back to Lowry’s post, this isn’t what the generic question is about. I think there is some very real anger, even from people like me, about Obama, and that might translate into some of the results you see in that type of poll question. But this doesn’t necessarily spell trouble for Obama’s chances in 2012. Because however pissed off at him I might be, I don’t have that short a memory, and I would never support Palin or whoever the hell else the GOP decides to throw up there.